THE CASTLE OF VAUTSBERG ON THE RHINE.

A chamber in a tower. PRINCE HENRY, sitting alone, ill

and restless.

PRINCE HENRY.

I CANNOT sleep! my fervid brain
Calls up the vanished Past again,
And throws its misty splendors deep
Into the pallid realms of sleep!

A breath from that far-distant shore
Comes freshening ever more and more,
And wafts o'er intervening seas
Sweet odors from the Hesperides!
A wind, that through the corridor
Just stirs the curtain, and no more,
And, touching the æolian strings,
Faints with the burden that it brings!

Come back! ye friendships long departed!
That like o'erflowing streamlets started,

And now are dwindled, one by one,
To stony channels in the sun!

Come back! ye friends, whose lives are ended!

Come back, with all that light attended,

Which seemed to darken and decay

When ye arose and went away!

They come, the shapes of joy and woe,
The airy crowds of long-ago,

The dreams and fancies known of yore,
That have been, and shall be no more.
They change the cloisters of the night
Into a garden of delight;

They make the dark and dreary hours
Open and blossom into flowers!

I would not sleep! I love to be
Again in their fair company;
But ere my lips can bid them stay,
They pass and vanish quite away!

Alas! our memories may retrace

Each circumstance of time and place,
Season and scene come back again,

And outward things unchanged remain;
The rest we cannot reinstate;

Ourselves we cannot re-create,

Nor set our souls to the same key
Of the remembered harmony!

Rest! rest! O, give me rest and peace!
The thought of life that ne'er shall cease
Has something in it like despair,
A weight I am too weak to bear!
Sweeter to this afflicted breast

The thought of never-ending rest!
Sweeter the undisturbed and deep
Tranquillity of endless sleep!

A flash of lightning, out of which LUCIFER appears, in the

garb of a travelling Physician.

LUCIFER.

All hail Prince Henry!

I found your study door unlocked,

And thought you answered when I knocked.

PRINCE HENRY.

I did not hear you.

LUCIFER.

You heard the thunder;

It was loud enough to waken the dead.

And it is not a matter of special wonder
That, when God is walking overhead,

You should not have heard my feeble tread.

What may your

PRINCE HENRY.

wish or purpose be?

LUCIFER.

Nothing or every thing, as it pleases
Your Highness. You behold in me
Only a travelling Physician;

One of the few who have a mission

To cure incurable diseases,

Or those that are called so.

PRINCE HENRY.

The dead to life?

Can you bring

LUCIFER.

Yes; very nearly.

And, what is a wiser and better thing,
Can keep the living from ever needing
Such an unnatural, strange proceeding,
By showing conclusively and clearly
That death is a stupid blunder merely,
And not a necessity of our lives.